Introductory Note
Aloha! My name is Eli Ladd and I am a Animation student in my senior year at freestyle academy. I have learned all sorts of animation techniques, from the ancient Zoetrope to modern Blender. I spend my free time playing with my cats, reading books, playing games(physical and digital), and surfing the web! I also spend a lot of my time helping out with various events in happening in the theater, from dance shows to musicals. I love working backstage because there are always things to do, the endless projects and welcoming community is my home away from home.
For my Showcase, I have selected a selection of work from my Senior year, trying to select the best of the best of what I have created. In this case I am showing my 3D character and animations, and my Geometry nodes project that I created for my zenith. I think both of these projects highlight my problem solving skills, and my artistic ability.
I am not entirely sure what I would like feedback on. I think I would appreciate general feedback on what you think I could improve on. I saw that you have worked with DreamWorks and Unity for ai and generating stuff like crowds and foliage, and would be interested to know your take on how terrain and assets are going to be created in the future of animation and game development.
I will be attending Knox College, Illinois majoring in computer science with a minor in stage tech. I am still not sure what I want to do after college, but I believe that AI will still be expanding and I would like to see how I can incorporate generative technology with my hobbies in the future.
You can contact me at elithedm@gmail.com for any information or questions, I usually am pretty quick to reply!
Showcase Video
My showcase Video takes a quick in depth journey through a few of my favorite projects that I have created at freestyle
All the projects showcased in the above showcase video I created for various class assignments in freestyle. I really appreciate the character creation process because it takes me through 3 different programs to get from start to finish, and it highlighted the importance of doing things right now so its easier later. I am also very proud of the final product that I created, even though it is fairly different from what I originally had in mind. Throughout this process I learned modeling in Maya, texturing in ZBrush, texture painting in Substance, and I think that all of these skills are vital for a lot of 3D creative work. The project that I am most proud about in my showcase is my Blender terrain generation with procedural trees. When I started the project, I had no idea how to do anything with blender’s geometry nodes, but throughout researching and learning how to create my project, I now know so much more then I thought I would learn.
My reel Video is a portfolio of the projects I am proud of that I have created during my time at freestyle.
Freestyle for me embodies one of my favorite quotes: “journey before destination.” I think that I have learned and grown so much during my time at freestyle. I started from knowing nothing about any of the Adobe suite, and now I know enough to be able to make almost anything I want! I think that that alone fulfills something that freestyle tries really hard to achieve: “to make us UNSTOPPABLE in the digital world.” Freestyle also helped increase my problem solving skills in case there is something that I do not know, I will have an easier time teaching myself in the future. Looking into the future, i believe that I grew immensely at Freestyle Academy and have created a amazing foundation to me to succeed in the increasingly digital world.